Photosharing has been part of our society since the advent of personal cameras. After taking photographs, film is developed and the resultant printed pictures are organized into a photo album or simply stored in some fashion. Thereafter, the owner of the pictures may share the pictures with a guest. In doing so, the owner and the guest are typically sitting side-by-side such that the owner and the guest can comment on each picture. For example, the owner and guest may exchange comments on the people in the picture, where the picture was taken, the day that the picture was taken, and the like. In this manner, the owner and the guest easily converse while viewing the pictures.
With the proliferation of digital cameras, a number of online photosharing systems have emerged in order to enable efficient and convenient sharing of digital images using online photo albums. Two architectures for online photosharing systems are a peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture or a centrally hosted architecture. In a P2P system, online photo albums are created and maintained on a peer node and served to guests from the peer node upon request. In a centrally hosted system, the photo albums are hosted on a central server and served from the central server to the guests upon request. These systems typically allow a guest to comment on a picture by entering the comment into a form. Thereafter, the owner of the picture may view the comment. However, these online photosharing systems do not allow the owner and guest to converse while an online photo album is being viewed by the guest. Thus, there remains a need for an online photosharing system that enables a photo chat session to be established between an owner of an online photo album and a guest viewing the online photo album.
Still further, since the participants in a chat session may desire to save the chat session, there remains a need for a system and method for recording a photo chat session between an owner of an online photo album and a guest viewing the online photo album.